During the past few years the world has become increasingly aware that the amount of available energy is being rapidly depleted. To make better use of the remaining available energy, all types of devices are being improved with a view toward conserving energy. One such device that has lagged in substantial improvement is the luminaire used in the lighting industry. Normally, these luminaires are used to illuminate general interior and exterior areas, such as, rooms, hallways or stairs in buildings, parking lots and tennis courts. The light emitted from these luminaires is normally designed to eliminate glare by simply controlling the distribution of light or polarizing the light within the general areas. It is through the control of the light that better illumination is obtained with less energy use.
The most common of these luminaires simply distributes the light within a general area and makes use of a reflector having an aperture, a fluorescent light source and a lighting panel disposed across the aperture. The light arriving at the aperture, either directly from the light source or reflected from the reflector, is generally diffused across the lighting panel from a multiplicity of directions. The lighting panel normally has a surface with a grouping of lenticular elements. These elements are designed to reflect the undesired light back into the luminaire and to refract the desired light into a distribution pattern. When the luminaire illuminates a room, the industry has found the most preferred distribution to be in the form of what is known in the art as a "batwing" lighting pattern. When the light emitted from the luminaire is polarized light, the lighting panel may be constructed from birefringent or multilayered polarizers, with the light having improper orientation being reflected back into the luminaire and the light having proper orientation passing into the illumination area.